Formal integration archetypes in ambidextrous organizations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordResearch suggests that organizational ambidexterity, an organization's capacity to pursue both exploratory and exploitative activities, is critical to firm innovation and performance. Extant research primarily emphasizes several firm‐level informal integration mechanisms, such as creating a common vision and relying on social integration, for integrating structurally ambidextrous units. Research has largely ignored, however, the formal mechanisms by which organizations have integrated such units. In this inductive study, using archival and interview data from organizations in Silicon Valley, we address this gap by identifying the formal integration archetypes that enable core business units to collaborate with new venture units to incubate new businesses. The four integration archetypes that enable collaboration vary along two key dimensions: who initiates new ventures and when collaboration is solicited. We identify formal administrative and resource mechanisms that enable such collaboration. We combine the disparate literatures of temporal and spatial separation of ambidextrous structures, and demonstrate how these must be combined at the business unit and new venture levels of analysis to achieve integration. The practical contribution of this study lies in identifying suitable contexts in which each of these archetypes can be utilized by practitioners for reintegrating new venture projects developed in separate structures

Whom Should We Talk to? Investigating the Varying Roles of Internal and External Relationship Quality on Radical and Incremental Innovation Performance

Research suggests that close relationships with internal and external partners are likely to have a significant impact on new product development (NPD). What is unclear is how the effects of internal and external relationships influence development paths for different types of innovations. Prior literature indicates that the pathways for developing incremental innovations differ considerably from those for radical innovations. Thus it is plausible that the effects of external versus internal relationships vary across these two innovation types. This paper uses the 2012 Comparative Performance Assessment Study (CPAS) data set to investigate the roles of internal and external relationship quality on the development of both incremental and radical innovations. The results find that internal and not external relationship quality is beneficial for the development of incremental innovations. When driven by internal relationships, a flexible NPD process is advantageous for the financial performance of incremental innovations. Meanwhile external and not internal relationship quality is valuable for developing radical innovations. External relationship quality results in process flexibility, leading to project execution success and subsequent financial performance for radical innovations. As expected, project execution success consistently leads to increased financial performance. These findings indicate the critical differences in types of relationship quality required when developing new products based on radical versus incremental innovations. © 2016 Product Development & Management Associatio

Non-invasive Glaucoma Screening Using Ocular Thermal Image Classification

Ocular thermography is an important, emerging modality in the diagnosis and management of diseases related to eye. It is a non-invasive procedure to evaluate the presence of eye diseases and monitor the response to treatments. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a system designed using infrared thermal image processing that detects glaucoma. Euclidean distance based segmentation technique is used to threshold the IR image to obtain the region of interest, where the manifestation of glaucoma is predominant. Features are extracted using statistical moments from the temperature mapped IR image and Gray Level Co-Occurrence Matrix of the IR image. Two significant attributes, namely the homogeneity and area of region of interest are the inputs to a Support Vector Machine classifier to classify a given input ocular thermal image as a normal or diseased image. In our simulation study, one hundred ocular thermal images with even number of normal and diseased subjects were analysed. The classifier has achieved a maximum accuracy of 96% when homogeneity and area of region of interest are used as attributes, indicating the potential use of proposed method for screening patients even at early stages of glaucoma

An interesting case of metastatic brain abscess

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a Gram-negative, non-motile, lactose fermenting, aerobic rod-shaped bacterium with three different subspecies, K. pneumoniae, Klebsiella ozaenae, and Klebsiella rhinoscleromatis. Here, we report the case of a 32-year-old male, chronic alcoholic presented with fever, hemoptysis, and headache of 20 days duration. Over a period of 4 days, the patient worsened with the development of altered sensorium and respiratory distress, connected to a mechanical ventilator. Computed tomography and chest X-ray showed consolidation involving the left lower lobe with an air-fluid level. Magnetic resonance imaging brain showed multiple metastatic brain abscess involving cerebrum and cerebellum and culture reports of sputum and blood showed K. pneumoniae. The patient was started on antibiotics along with anti-tubercular drugs. In spite of effective management, the patient developed recurrent episodes of hemoptysis and died of respiratory failure. For the concomitant involvement of both cerebrum and cerebellum for the first time

Vanishing headache in a young female: An interesting case report

Headache is one of the most common neurological symptom occurring worldwide. Here, we present a unique case of secondary headache in a young female which got reversed with appropriate treatment. A young female who presented with a severe subacute unilateral left-sided intractable headache with papilledema and obstructive hydrocephalus was found to have 4th ventricular neurocysticercosis causing obstruction of the foramen of Magendi and Luschka, relieved on timely surgical excision and with medical management. This case is reported to highlight the rare causes of secondary headache and various presentations of neurocysticercosis, in endemic areas like India as it causes neurological morbidity which can be alleviated on appropriate treatment, thereby preventing economic hardship and improving the quality of life

Acquisition of Operations Capability: A Model and Test across US and European Firms

In this paper, a three-factor model of operations capability is presented which, unlike previous studies that view capability as an outcome, examines the drivers of capability acquisition. The model proposes that capability acquisition is a function of an organization\u27s commitment to the principles of quality management, just-in-time practices, and effective new product development processes. Furthermore, the paper proposes that these underlying facets of capability acquisition are common across geographic boundaries. The model is tested using data drawn from US and European companies. Results not only provide support for the three-factor model, but also for the invariance of the model and its underlying components between US and European firms

Decentralized [Hscr] ∞ controller design for large-scale civil structures

Complexities inherent to large-scale modern civil structures pose many challenges in the design of feedback structural control systems for dynamic response mitigation. With the emergence of low-cost sensors and control devices creating technologies from which large-scale structural control systems can deploy, a future control system may contain hundreds, or even thousands, of such devices. Key issues in such large-scale structural control systems include reduced system reliability, increasing communication requirements, and longer latencies in the feedback loop. To effectively address these issues, decentralized control strategies provide promising solutions that allow control systems to operate at high nodal counts. This paper examines the feasibility of designing a decentralized controller that minimizes the [Hscr] ∞ norm of the closed-loop system. [Hscr] ∞ control is a natural choice for decentralization because imposition of decentralized architectures is easy to achieve when posing the controller design using linear matrix inequalities. Decentralized control solutions are investigated for both continuous-time and discrete-time [Hscr] ∞ formulations. Numerical simulation results using a 3-story and a 20-story structure illustrate the feasibility of the different decentralized control strategies. The results also demonstrate that when realistic semi-active control devices are used in combination with the decentralized [Hscr] ∞ control solution, better performance can be gained over the passive control cases. It is shown that decentralized control strategies may provide equivalent or better control performance, given that their centralized counterparts could suffer from longer sampling periods due to communication and computation constraints. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61866/1/862_ftp.pd

Resolving forward-reverse logistics multi-period model using evolutionary algorithms

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd In the changing competitive landscape and with growing environmental awareness, reverse logistics issues have become prominent in manufacturing organizations. As a result there is an increasing focus on green aspects of the supply chain to reduce environmental impacts and ensure environmental efficiency. This is largely driven by changes made in government rules and regulations with which organizations must comply in order to successfully operate in different regions of the world. Therefore, manufacturing organizations are striving hard to implement environmentally efficient supply chains while simultaneously maximizing their profit to compete in the market. To address the issue, this research studies a forward-reverse logistics model. This paper puts forward a model of a multi-period, multi-echelon, vehicle routing, forward-reverse logistics system. The network considered in the model assumes a fixed number of suppliers, facilities, distributors, customer zones, disassembly locations, re-distributors and second customer zones. The demand levels at customer zones are assumed to be deterministic. The objective of the paper is to maximize the total expected profit and also to obtain an efficient route for the vehicle corresponding to an optimal/near optimal solution. The proposed model is resolved using Artificial Immune System (AIS) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithms. The findings show that for the considered model, AIS works better than the PSO. This information is important for a manufacturing organization engaged in reverse logistics programs and in running units efficiently. This paper also contributes to the limited literature on reverse logistics that considers costs and profit as well as vehicle route management